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Institute of Social Sciences

Chair of International Relations

Research

Research Interests

Drittmittelprojekte

Research Colloquium

Summer School

DVPW

The Chair of International Relations, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Anja P. Jakobi, conducts research in the following areas:

Global Crime Governance

Global crime governance is nowadays manifested in national and international agendas, in the proliferation of global regulations, it is reflected in growing international budgets, and the enlarged mandates of international organizations. With its focus on human trafficking, corruption, cybercrime and money laundering cases, global crime governance examines and analyzes the conditions under which global crime governance emerges as well as its institutional design and its impact on existing political and societal contexts.

Following staff members do their research within this field:

In the global policy field Global Crime Governance Janina Kandt conducts research on EU decision-making processes with regard to human trafficking regulations and the inclusion of non-state actors.

Human trafficking is one of the most widely discussed global crimes which is understood as illegal and profit-based exploitation of people in different contexts. This policy field is characterized by a traditional high non-state actor involvement as moral deliberations are crucially involved.

Combating Human trafficking is part of the European Union's policy making, but the EU's mechanisms to tackle human trafficking are weakly institutionalized and highly fragmented. In this regard non-state actors are of significant importance to complement this lack and impact the capacity and competence building when it comes to the implementation and execution of human trafficking regulations in the European Union. Janina Kandt’s research interest is particularly on the strategies non-state actors choose to influence the establishment and implementation of processes of these regulations. She also analyzes the variance of non-state actors involvement compared to other policy areas.

A world of numbers

… is not solely something a mathematician is surrounded with, but also a challenge IR students and researchers face in their work. Insecure numbers in specific policy fields raise the necessity to think about validity and reliability of collected data, especially due to their implications for policy propositions. This issue shows a collection of figures on different crime and violence fields, such as human trafficking or terrorism. The wide range of different numbers and sometimes the absence of a common approach to global statistics highlights the importance of critical thinking and further research in this field of study. The issue does not suggest that all statistics are bad or falsified – rather, that it is important to develop expertise with regard to numbers.

You can find the full magazine here.

Governance of global illegal markets

Illegal market mechanisms can be compared to those of legal markets. Due to a significant overlap of both, the prevention of transactions across legal and illegal market spheres is a central task of governance. Yet, we face huge institutional variance from completely state-based forms of governance to completely private regulations. By comparing different cases of illegal markets and the public-private interplay in governing them, we aim to resolve the question of why specific forms are established and how this impacts the overall governance aim.

Working Paper on the Basics of Governing Global Markets, 2016

Following staff members do their research within this field:

Maike Stelter specializes in governance of global illegal markets, specializing in the market for illegal timber.

Non-Traditional Security Threats

Criminals and gangs, rebels or hackers are increasingly defined as new types of security threat and have become a central concern in world politics. At the same time, issues like climate change, water scarcity or weak governance capabilities have been identified as potential triggers of conflict. Our research in this field analyses the impact of these actors and issues on the societal, national and international order.

Following staff members do their research within this field:

In the research area of non-traditional security threats, Katharina Mann examines in her dissertation the function and dynamic of gangs as a particular group of violent non-state actors. In this respect, on the one hand the project sheds light on the emerged structures of shanty towns and slums in the context of increasing urbanization and fragile statehood. On the other hand, it particularly investigates the actions and behaviors of gangs as actors and their impacts on the social order.

The structural deprivation of urban areas does not only refer to the socio-economic but also gender-based dimension of living conditions of the township dwellers, which is reflected in the analysis of gangs. In this regard, on the one hand, gangs are closely connected with illegal and criminal activities and on the other hand, they are typically characterized as highly masculinized groups, whereby the existence of female memberships remains unexplored. Following, the exploration of the gender dimension of gang memberships constitutes the central part of the research by asking for the gender-specific motivation of women joining a gang and the impact of female gang membership on the gender perception in society regarding gender deprivation.

Global Governance, International Institutions and Policy Diffusion

Our different research strands feed into research on the current state of international affairs and world society. Our research interest lies in the systematic exploration of norms and policies on the international level, and of the actors involved in promoting or implementing them. This includes research on global governance and international organizations, transnational governance, global norms and policy diffusion.

Following staff members do their research within this field:

Dr. Bastian Loges interest centres on global protection governance with three different but related areas of research:

First, Dr. Bastian Loges scrutinised the status of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as an international norm by examining the debates on the “Protection of civilians in armed conflict” inside the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Fuelled by norm entrepreneurs a considerable process of norm diffusion took place in these open thematic debated that ultimately lead to an expansion of R2P’s legitimacy.

Second, Dr. Bastian Loges is interested in the emergence of an explicitly non-military protection norm within the UN system. Starting from the observation that most protection efforts fail to deliver effective protection to people in need, the first stage of this research is a comprehensive account of the different, sometimes even conflicting conceptions of protection. These inconsistencies as well as missing institutions for coordination or substantial gaps between protection conceptions and their implementation on the ground may hider norm diffusion or effective governance.

Third, Dr. Bastian Loges engages in advancing norm research via further theorising. His research on the epistemological implications of recent norm theory as well as his approach to conceptualise norms of responsibility like R2P as emotional beliefs are part of this engagement.

Beyond this research on global protection governance, Dr. Bastian Loges is interested in new working methods and transformations inside the UNSC. In this regard, he is working on the establishment of a data set on the thematic debates from 1998 onwards by asking about the further inclusion of non-state actors into UNSC affairs.